Just when you thought you’d heard it all, someone manages to take stupidity to a whole new level:

29-year-old Sloan Carafello joined a small skydiving crew after asking them to observe the jump. Despite having no parachute, he jumped out of the plane before the pilot could close the door. He did bring his camera and apparently took pictures of himself as he fell towards the earth. 10,000 feet later, he bounced off of a roof (pictured to the left) and was overcome with a sudden case of death. You can read the whole story here.

No one knows exactly why he did this, but no one was surprised by inevitable outcome of his actions. Something else is clear—this man was 100% responsible for committing suicide. It was his decision.

Why am I writing about this? Well, I often remind students to consider the consequences of their actions. Young people in particular have a tendency to live recklessly. Here’s the really crazy part: sometimes they blame God for the outcome of their own bad decisions.

I frequently compare God’s laws to the law of gravity. If I jump out of an airplane, I cannot expect God to suspend the law of gravity for me. In much the same way, we cannot really break God’s laws–we can only break ourselves against them.

Consider other consequences that come from bad decisions:

*If you have sex outside of marriage, there are emotional, spiritual, and physical costs. *If you don’t study before your exam, you’ll probably fail it. *If you cheat and lie, people will lose trust in you. *If you smoke cigarettes, you’ll destroy your physical health. *If you abuse alcohol or drugs, you risk becoming addicted and destroying your life. *If you spend more money than you earn, you’ll end up in debt.

We know these things to be true, and God has given us plenty of warnings.

The next time you are tempted to do something stupid, consider Jesus’ temptation to go skydiving with no parachute:

Then the devil took him to the holy city, Jerusalem, to the highest point of the Temple, and said, “If you are the Son of God, jump off! For the Scriptures say, ‘He will order his angels to protect you. And they will hold you up with their hands so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone.’”